Brilliant (21 page)

F  O  R  T  Y  -  S  I  X

The Carstairs auction had been postponed for ninety more days, giving Owen and Gil’s crew of forgers and workmen much-needed time to make progress. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that project and told Owen so.

“It’s exciting,” I said, “but it makes me really, really, uncomfortable to have such an active and visible role. I mean, the fact is, Owen, if this thing were to get blown open, I don’t want to be the one going to jail because I was the one out there giving them orders.”

This was the truth. My own little operation was just that: mine, and I had it controlled down to the smallest detail. And speaking of small, if I felt I was about to be apprehended with a load of goods, they could vanish in the twinkling of an eye, off a bridge, down a sewer, into someone else’s purse, someone unsuspecting, into an Underground wastebin. I could stand my ground without physically running from the law and making myself suspect. But these men were involved with physically big things: armoires, sideboards, bedsteads, works of art. You get caught with a couple of hot Louis XVI vitrines or a forged Gainesborough in your possession, you—not your goods—have to be what vanishes, and I’m just not that fit. And Owen’s remark at our first luncheon at Cliveden about how stolen or forged decorative arts were not a priority of the government? Well, that’s true in America, but in England, France, and Italy? The preservation and conservation of antiquities are very high priorities, indeed. They prosecute to the full extent of the law. The thought of perpetrating fraud on the sheer physical scale of Owen and Gil’s operation was completely out of the question—it scared me to death. I would be at the mercy of their competence, which I believed to be minimal. I’d sooner quit—take my marbles and scoot.

“I understand,” he said, but I wasn’t sure if he did or not. I still didn’t know him well enough, mentally, to be able to tell what he was thinking. “Don’t worry about it. Frankly, I think Gil would just as soon handle it himself.”

Gil’s willingness to have a conversation with me on the subject, which hadn’t been that great to start with, had diminished. Sometimes it even bordered on hostile. Possibly he was jealous of my growing relationship with Owen.

“Now.” He opened a folder on this desk. “Back to business. Would you get this guy on the phone for me?” He handed me a slip of paper with one word: Hiller. “I think he lives in Vermont.”

“Is this his company?”

“No, that’s his name. John Hiller. He’s a hacker.”

“You mean a computer hacker?”

“Best there is.”

I put my hands over my ears. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

Owen was laughing as I closed the door.

The elevator chimed discreetly, the door whispered open, and the most beautiful, elegant woman I’ve ever seen in my life stepped into our reception area. I recognized her immediately. It was Odessa Niandros. She was a bigger celebrity than Princess Diana had been. Odessa was famous for a number of things: Her beauty—she had China doll, square-bobbed hair—so jet-black glossy it was blue; wide-set, electric blue eyes, almost Asian in shape; and a tall, lithe, athletic body that moved like a ballerina’s. She only wore white. She was very, very rich. She was very, very philanthropic. She was also said to be very, very nice. When she got her way, which was most of the time. And—this was the tire kicker: She controlled her late sister’s, Princess Arianna’s, estate. Odessa Niandros was major-league, and she was looking for someone to do her bidding, auction her goods. The competition for her attention among the top three houses had heated up to a state of free-for-all. Any of us would do anything to get her.

She glided toward my desk like an angel from heaven.

I put a smile on my face. “Welcome to Ballantine & Company, Miss Niandros. Such as it is at the moment.”

“What a tragedy. I’m so sorry for your losses.” Her voice was low, throaty, full of cigarettes and what sounded like late nights. Her accent was thick, and honey-coated. “Mr. Brace is expecting me.”

“I’ll let him know you’re here. Excuse me.” I closed Owen’s office door behind me. He had his regular phone to one ear and his cell phone to the other. “Did you know Odessa Niandros was coming today?”

“What?”

“Odessa Niandros. She’s here. She said you’re expecting her.” Owen made a face and shook his head. “What does she want?”

“Who cares what she wants? Put on your jacket and fix your tie. Do you want me to call David? Have him sit in?”

Since the bombing, David de Menuil attended practically every meeting and listened in on almost every conversation because our world had become a locus for anybody even tangentially associated with the legal profession. Because of the influence and financial resources of the customers who’d been injured in the explosion, our case was coming close to setting records for litigiousness in Great Britain. Lawsuits had come instantly and in an avalanche, changing our business overnight from auctioneers to defendants.

David informed Owen that this was just the beginning. “The bigger suits are in the works, and they’ll blow all the rest out of the water,” he’d warned. “The best legal minds in the world are working for the injured parties.”

“Bring ’em on,” Owen said. “They don’t scare me. We’re as injured as they are.”

“Not exactly. You still have all your eyes, ears, skin, arms, legs, fingers, and toes.”

Owen considered whether or not to include David. “Let’s see what Miss Niandros wants first.”

Once I’d fixed them up with beverages—hot tea for her and black coffee for him—I returned to my desk and crossed my fingers.

“. . . so?” I said, when Odessa left twenty minutes later.

Owen shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t want to get my hopes up, but she’s going to award the collections individually, so we’re definitely in the running, especially with the jewelry. Thanks to the Russians, we’re the ones with the Big Mo in that department. We’ll see.”

“She reminds me of Kublai Khan.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, not only does she look a little Mongolian, she also looks like she might be a little bit into pain, if you know what I mean.”

“Whose? Hers or mine?” He smiled lecherously.

“Definitely yours.”

“I think you’re nuts.”

“Yes? Well, watch your flanks. I think she could tie you up and rip your heart out and eat it before you even knew you’d been kissed.”

“You know what?” Owen put his arms around me and ground himself into my thigh.

“What?”

“I only have eyes for you.”

“Baloney.” But then he kissed me and fondled me and pulled my jacket and bra off in one smooth motion, and so I believed him.

A few minutes later he asked me to get Gil on the phone. “I got the info,” he said without preamble. “And I’ve got the strategy. She’ll never know what hit her.”

Kublai Khan meets Godzilla. Poor Odessa.

F  O  R  T  Y  -  S  E  V  E  N

Owen and I grew increasingly besotted with each other. The Fraud. The Bomb. The Jewels. Everything was more, more, more. It was like being rock stars. Wherever we went, Green’s or Wilton’s or Le Caprice or Mark’s or for martinis in the tiny bar at the Dukes, or on weekends at Cliveden, which became our weekend retreat, people would come up to Owen and ask him about the bomb and the Russian jewelry and speculate about what huge security measures he’d be forced to take in the future. He basked in the recognition, his ego was fed. I basked in his reflection, which I kept telling myself was close enough to the flame for me.

The sex became more and more passionate and satisfying. I received the benefit of Owen’s years of womanizing. He laid me out. He petted me. He pushed me to levels of ecstasy I’d never imagined existed. He worshipped me. He adored me.

“I love you, Kick,” he said.

We were at “our” table at Caprice, which had become “our” restaurant. It was my birthday. The waiter had just cleared our first course of oysters on the half shell and refilled our glasses with the last of a bottle of champagne.

“What?”

“I said, I love you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Why can’t you see how right we are together?”

“It’s too long a story, Owen. Let’s just leave things alone.”

“Here’s how things are: I am in love with you. But”—he held up his hands—“I’m not saying you have to love me. But I’ll tell you what, one of these days you will love me back, because when I want something, I keep after it until I get it, and I know that sooner or later, you’ll surrender to my charms.”

“You are something else.” I laughed.

Dinner was an appetizer of braised white asparagus, followed by lamb shanks, so tender they fell from the bone at the slightest touch, with buttered spinach and garlic-roasted potatoes. Owen even ordered the wines himself: a Louis Bovard Sauvignon Villette 1998—“I know it’s Swiss,” he informed me, “but it’s perfect with asparagus.” (He was right.) And a 1983 Guigal Côte-Rotie Brune et Blonde, a great Rhone from a great year.

“Nicely done,” I said.

“I’m trying.”

We talked about wine and food, and business, not love. Owen talked in detail about his plans for Ballantine, how he could picture it as a billion-dollar company within five years, a mega–cash machine. It still annoyed me that he had no passion for the business itself. He’d invested a lot of money, expertise, and hope, but nothing visceral. Ballantine & Company was simply a means to an end. For me, as the silent owner of 15 percent of the firm, his lack of personal commitment didn’t bode well for its success in the long run.

“A billion dollars in five years? That puts a lot of pressure on Bertram,” I said.

Owen shrugged. “If he can’t take the heat, he’ll have to get out of the kitchen.”

“Oh, baloney. If you didn’t have Bertram’s relationship-building ability with the clients, you would have been out of business six months ago, and you know it. Face it, Owen, when it comes to personal relationships, one-on-one stuff, you’re hopeless.”

“Except where it counts.”

“True.” I lifted my glass. Chocolate soufflés arrived. And more champagne. Followed by the maître d’ with a large package wrapped in silver paper and tied with green satin ribbon.

“Happy birthday,” Owen said.

Inside was a set of six, early-eighteenth-century, Chinese export plates painted with the Keswick coat of arms—my very, very, very, distant ancestral family, although I still had never been able to figure out how or why anyone with the honorable Scottish name of Keswick ended up in Oklahoma.

“That’s the Keswick family crest,” Owen announced proudly.

“I know.” I was almost speechless. The plates were rare and extremely valuable. “Where did you get them?”

“It wasn’t easy, especially without asking for your help.”

“I can’t believe it. I’ve never gotten such a thoughtful gift.”

“And I’ve never given one. Believe me. How’s that for relationship building?”

I laughed. “Touché.”

He raised his glass. “Here’s to us.”

“To us,” I answered with less reluctance than I wanted to feel.

He began to give me other gifts as well, none of them from companies he owned. He gave me thoughtful, authentic, appropriate gifts—old books, rare vintages—and I found myself being pulled into a vortex of pleasure and happiness that I struggled against. Half-heartedly. Futilely. I was accustomed to luxury, but receiving pleasure was a new experience. Love was knocking at my door. There is no “us,” I kept telling myself, and him.

I felt the dangerous truths about myself struggling to get to the surface, an almost overpowering need to share them. A number of times I felt the words filling my mouth to tell Owen everything, to admit I was a juvenile delinquent from Oklahoma, a jewel thief— one of the best, and most notorious, in the world—a forger, a Provencal farmer. That I had a driver’s license and owned not one, but two, cars! Sometimes the words packed themselves into my mouth as if I’d taken a bite of a sparkler and I had to swallow them whole and make them go away. I had to bat them away from the inside of my head like a swarm of bees. “Can’t you see?” I wanted to scream sometimes. “Don’t you get it? I’m
Raskolnikov’s
sister.” I was living proof of Dostoyevsky’s
Crime and Punishment
. My past was looming, and I had to run harder and harder to stay ahead of it.

Owen and I didn’t spend every evening together—sometimes he had meetings, or I was just plain too tired. On those nights, I’d pick up curried chicken and rice from the Indian restaurant in Cadogan Square where the curry was so hot, it almost set my hair on fire (Owen hated curry. I adored it. The hotter the better.), and stay home and eat as much as I wanted, letting the fiery spices and burning chutney swell my eyes shut and make my nose run.

I packed up boxes of books—my disguised library of jewels, jewelry, faceting, and cutting—and shipped them to a post office box in St. Rémy in care of my caretaker Pierre’s sister, Hélène. I restocked the shelves with leather-bound volumes that were about what they said they were about. Why was I doing this? I wasn’t too sure. Was it because I still planned to take off, or was it because I didn’t want to risk that Owen would start to notice them and get curious? And then what? Not love me anymore? Was I loving him? Oh, God, I hope not. I wanted to love someone better than I was, not someone worse. I needed someone to lift me up, raise my sights, make me a better person, not appeal to my baser and more nefarious instincts.

Sometimes, I’d take the Queen’s Pet out of the safe, clasp it on my wrist, and lie in a hot bubble bath listening to a symphony, trying to reclaim my equilibrium, trying to find happiness in the hard, fast, tangible elements that had provided it to me before.

F  O  R  T  Y  -  E  I  G  H  T

Owen and Bertram sent letters, flowers, and gifts to Odessa Niandros, and got nothing but silence in return. Then one morning, three weeks after her visit, she called.

“Good morning, Mr. Brace’s office,” I answered.

“Odessa here.”

“Good morning, Miss Niandros. I imagine you’re looking for Mr. Brace.”

“Yes, would you put him on?”

“I’m sorry, but he’s out of the office. I expect to hear from him soon. Where can we reach you?”

“Let me tell you what I want, dear. Would you arrange for him, and Bertram, and . . . what’s your jewelry man’s name?”

“Andrew Gardner?”

“Yes, him. Arrange for them to come to my London house at four o’clock a week from next Thursday. I will have all the princess’s jewelry here at that time, and they can see about making a proposal for me.”

“They’ll be there. Also, Miss Niandros, do you have a time line?”

“Time line? What do you mean, ‘time line’?”

“Yes, well.” I felt myself getting a little flustered. “When do you want to have the jewelry auctioned?”

“May first.”

It was March.

“Perfect. I’ll let Mr. Brace know. They’ll see you at four o’clock next Thursday.”

Click. She didn’t even say good-bye. I didn’t think that was so nice for someone who everybody says is.

When I told Owen, he didn’t bat an eye at the timetable. Neither did Bertram.

“This falls right in line with your plan,” Owen said. Both of them were smiling, and Bertram nodded enthusiastically. The only visible trace of his wounds were the pinkish lines of fresh scars on his face and the backs of his hands, but they were already falling into the natural folds of his skin and would soon be invisible.

“Delicious, isn’t it?” Bertram beamed.

“What plan is that?” I asked.

“While I was lying in hospital,” Bertram told me, “it gave me the opportunity to do a full assessment not only of our industry, but also of where we fit in it. And the reality is, no matter how much money Brace pours in, we’ll never be able to grow fast enough or capture a sufficient percentage of market share to compete squarely with Sotheby’s or Christie’s—they’re too entrenched. Too powerful. So I looked at the big picture and realized we could either keep bashing our collective head against the wall, making a little progress here and there, but never a deep enough cut to inflict a real wound on the competition, much less a mortal blow, or we could reinvent our- selves. Get off their playing field and make our own.”

“Such as?”

“Such as become specialists.”

“Specialists?” I forced myself not to get alarmed or paranoid that a plan to change the direction of the company had been developed without my knowledge.

Bertram nodded. “Instead of accepting any item that comes our way, whether it’s Roman antiquities, twelfth-century manuscripts, or early-twentieth-century American furniture, we’re going to put all our energy behind becoming the world’s leading auctioneers of only three categories: furniture, specifically nineteenth- and twentieth-century English, French, Italian, and American; paintings, European, American, and South American nineteenth- and twentieth-century only; and jewelry.”

“What about the Carstairs estate?” I shot a glance at Owen—he couldn’t send all that stuff down the drain. He’d already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in those reproductions. “It’s primarily eighteenth.”

“This isn’t going to happen overnight,” Bertram, who was still ignorant of the scam, replied. “And because the Carstairs goods will be our last major auction of eighteenth-century furniture and paintings, the competition will be keen. Buyers will think we’re desperate to sell. We’ll hold a secondary auction to clear out our warehouse. It will be fabulous. People will go wild. Well?” He looked at me. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s thrilling.”

“Wait till you see what it does to our bottom line.” Owen beamed at Bertrand. “By limiting our areas of expertise, we can reduce our staff by about 50 percent—no more suit-of-armor, or Staffordshire, or Gobelin tapestry brainiacs. However, there is one possible roadblock.”

Bertram raised his eyebrows. “Such as?”

“Got to get the Ballantine board to approve it.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I’ve got that 15 percent wildcard: the KDK Trust and that tight- assed bank officer who votes the shares. I wish to hell whoever controls that goddamned thing would listen to sense and sell out. It’d sure make my life a lot easier.”

I didn’t tell him not to worry about the KDK Trust officer—he’d approve because I’d tell him to. The plan was as adroit as Bertram. He was the only one who loved and understood the business and Ballantine’s as much as I did. His passion and genius would save the house in the long run, not Owen’s greed, and certainly not his fake furniture scheme.

On the other hand, I was more than a little ripped that Owen hadn’t put me in the loop on this plan sooner. “Well, you’re right,” I said. “Whoever it is could sabotage the whole idea. That would be too bad.”

The phone rang, and I answered from Owen’s desk. “One moment, sir, I’ll let him know you’re on the line.” I punched the hold button. “Lord Spaulding.”

“Lord Spaulding?” Owen looked blank.

“You know,” I said. “Lord Richard Spaulding, eighth Earl of Lincolnshire, as in Spaulding Air, the Spaulding Group. Spaulding Scotch Whiskey. Hello? Any bells yet?”

Bertram shook his head and laughed.

“Right.” Owen smiled. “I’m with you.” He took the receiver. “Lord Spaulding, what a pleasant surprise to hear from you. How may I be of service?”

Owen was learning fast. He listened. Nodded a couple of times, kept listening, and finally said, “I’d love to, thanks. See you then.” He hung up. “I’m going away next weekend.”

“Oh?”

“I’m going fishing in Scotland.”

“That’s terrific,” I said.

“No big deal.”

It was a very big deal, and it was exactly the sort of affirmation Owen had been seeking. This was his first invitation into the inner sanctum of that upper-class, private world, where people had hunting and fishing lodges on gigantic private acreages, and art and sword and suit-of-armor collections that had been in their families for generations, for all the good that would do us now, once we put Bertram’s specialization plan into effect.

“Their retrievers and spaniels have better pedigrees than most of the aristocracy,” Bertram commented. “Well done, Owen. This is a landmark. Invitations to Richard Spaulding’s castle—Lord Richard’s anything for that matter—are hard to come by. I’ve only been there a few times myself.” He couldn’t help preening. “Better get yourself over to Hardy’s.”

“Hardy’s?”

“You know, man. The House of Hardy. The fishing store down around the corner. You’ve got to get properly suited up. This will be a crowd that takes their fishing seriously.”

“Right.”

“Funny. I’ve heard the sport up there is for more warm-blooded prey,” I said, unable to keep an unfortunate cryptic sneer out of my voice.

“What do you mean?”

“That it’s like the Playboy Mansion of Scotland.”

“Rubbish!” Bertram barked. “That’s those bloody tabloids for you, always just short of libelous. It’s nothing of the sort.”

“Oh,” Owen looked disappointed. “Too bad. I’d much rather fuck than fish.”

“OWEN BRACE!”

“Sorry, Kick.” His face was instantly red. “I’m kidding. Sorry, Bertram.”

“One step forward, ten steps back,” Bertram muttered as he left the room.